A “tablet” is typically considered to be a general-purpose computing device, usually contained in a single panel, and using a touch screen as the input device and as the display device. The preceding sentence is to indicate the general nature of a tablet, is not a definition, and is not limiting, as other functions, features, and capabilities may be provided in, or for use with, a tablet.
Some tablets have a micro-USB “on-the-go” or “OTG” port. The OTG port allows the tablet to switch back and forth between the roles of a host device or a client device. For example, if a memory card is plugged into the OTG port, the tablet acts as a host device to write to and/or read from the memory card, but the tablet then acts as a client device, such as a USB Mass Storage Device, when the tablet is connected to a host computer via the OTG port. If, however, some information in the tablet memory is to be transferred to both a memory card and a host computer, then multiple operations are required: the memory card must be plugged in, the information transferred, the memory card unplugged, the host computer plugged in, the information transferred, and then the host computer unplugged. Likewise if information from a memory card and other information from a host computer are to be transferred to the tablet memory, then multiple operations are required.
The standard internal memory of many devices, including but not limited to tablets, may be somewhat limited, however, thus making additional memory desirable or even necessary. Buying a larger internal memory at the time of purchase is often an expensive proposition at the consumer end, adding more internal memory after purchase may be difficult, extremely expensive, or even practically impossible, especially by the consumer, and a manufacturer may be reluctant to even provide the option or capability to add more memory. Thus, the consumer may be faced with the choice of paying substantially more at the time of purchase for additional internal memory, or of being resigned to the internal memory size that the consumer can afford at the time of purchase. Or, if the manufacturer provides an OTG port, the consumer can plug a memory card into the OTG port. In this case the memory card will extend from the tablet, thus making the memory card susceptible to accidental impact, which can result in the memory card being unplugged and lost, the memory card being damaged, and/or the tablet being damaged.